Yokohama

After saying goodbye to my friend Philip who is heading back to Germany, I left to go to Yokohama. The last time I saw Philip was in Toronto when he visited in August. Thanks for showing me the way around Tokyo Philip, it was nice seeing you again!

I'm staying in a city called Yokohama which has about 3.6 million people. It only took under 20 minutes to get here from Tokyo.

This is my new house for the week. It's a house filled with Japanese people and foreigners. The living room, kitchen and bathroom are shared. Some of the bedrooms are shared. For instance, my friend Desmond, shares his room with three other people. All of his roommates are very interesting. One of them comes from Sri Lanka, another from Canada, a couple are Japanese but have lived in Nepal for a few years and are back temporarily.

We had a Christmas party and cooked turkey. The ovens here are so small that we had to stuff the turkey into the oven. Normally, if we were in Canada we would be able to cook a turkey twice the size but due to spacial restrictions, they don't even sell turkey's as big as hours in Canada.

I met scone man. If you don't know about scone man, check out his youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6HqQFfwqOI&



Here are some Japanese boys eating hot pot. It was a picture perfect moment so I had to take it.












Here is our Christmas cake. It's like their rum cake during Christmas. Someone told me that couples in Japan celebrate in Japan unlike in other countries where you celebrate with your family. I suppose it's another hallmark holiday here because it's not celebrated for religious reasons. There are hardy any Christians or Catholics here. The majority of Japanese are Buddhist or Shinto.






Because Yokohama is a port city there are quite a few immigrants living here. The city even has its own Chinatown.
It seemed very commercialized therefore it didn't feel like a real Chinatown to me. It felt like I was in a fake city like the time I was in Universal Studios in the fake European town. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time there especially since we had all you can eat dim sum.

In Japan they call dim sum, yum cha which means drink tea.
The ironic thing is that the meal doesn't come with tea and one has to pay extra for it. -_-"